Success Sells

A favorite read of mine is The Pessimist blog, and this week they have a very interesting philosophical statement, which is nothing says Success like selling your “secrets of success” . The heart of the concept is that being over-confident in your own skills makes you seem much more successful (according to Forbes, the Kardashian effect). If you are a shameless self-promoter and over confident you will be successful (or at least appear to be successful).

After reading over many different posts lately for a lot of reasons (not just for the Carnival of Personal Finance), and I tend to agree with the concept that: Shtick seems to overrule Skill™.

I realize that most Leaders have a degree of Chutzpah or Brashness in them, but the number of “get rich quick” schemes out there clearly out strips the money to be made from them (except for the person selling the Get Rich Quick scheme).

How Do I Make Millions?

So the implication seems to be that you:

1. Claim to be a financial Success
2. Create a “methodology” about how you became “successful”
3. Whore, shill, and sell this until the cows come home (with the correct legaleze disclaiming any claims that it actually works)
4. Wait for the money to roll in
5. Success!

Success is the result of this function, not the catalyst. Stay tuned I’ll need to start marketing: The BCM Make a Million Bucks as a Personal Finance Bloggerâ„¢.